Vincent: The King Of Tv's Beasts Every Male Has A Beauty Within, But It's A Rare Man Who Shows It

SINGLES

December 19, 1989|By Susan M. Barbieri of The Sentinel Staff

Female hearts across the land are all aflutter this week because one of the nation's most oddly desirable males just became available - Vincent, the half-man, half-lion hero of the television show Beauty and the Beast.

Vincent is a rather unlikely heartthrob, as heartthrobs go. After all, he's just a tad hairy, don't you think? The stubbly Don Johnson/George Michael look is one thing - and oooh, don't we women just love a mustache? - but a full mane is quite another. Perhaps someone should stuff a Remington cordless in Vinnie's Christmas stocking. Then there's the little matter of the fangs. I'm not sure I'd want that guy kissing my neck.

And that apartment. Positively medieval. I love the antiques, wrought iron and stained glass, but the old drainpipe could use some brightening up. Say some dried flowers here, a watercolor there. A dehumidifier might help with the moisture problem. Vincent's is a quirky-looking pad, to be sure. Old Siggy Freud would have a field day with the tunnel metaphor.

Vince may be weird-looking, but he has sex appeal and would surely be deluged with responses if he took out a personal ad. ''SML (Single Man-Lion) seeks purr-fect den mate for poetic passion, paw-holding and heavy petting. I don't shed, don't growl (unless someone threatens my fair kitty) and I enjoy candlelight dinners over a fresh carcass with my mane squeeze.''

Very appealing. But women beware: Vinnie's lover just got croaked by the CBS script writers, and he is on the rebound. He's also about to get into an ugly custody battle with the sleazoids who kidnapped his baby boy.

Men are probably completely befuddled by the popularity of this beast-beauty stuff. How can women be attracted to a critter? Do they think the pickings are so slim in the single kingdom that they must hunt for a male in the animal one? Harrumph!

Ah, but it's the beauty in the beast that women find so alluring. Actor Ron Perlman was once quoted about his character's appeal: ''Vincent is the ultimate fantasy lover, someone who asks nothing in return but gives 100 percent. . . . He evokes deep unconscious feelings of longing for a connection to someone who understands things on a very emotional level.''

For the men who ask, ''What do women want?'' there's the answer. But, they doth protest, ''Women don't want a man who's nice.'' That is patently false. ''Nice'' doesn't necessarily mean ''wimpy.'' There are many shadings between the two. A man can still be manly while expressing his ''feminine side,'' as therapists call it. Perhaps men would find the notion more palatable if they thought of it as their ''Vincent side.''

Jay, a 40-year-old friend of mine, startled me one day by admitting that he envied women's freedom to express their emotions. Men feel that they must walk around wearing emotional straitjackets or they won't be ''real men,'' he said, so they hide behind a cold, insensitive veneer, thinking women find the facade attractive. Jay doesn't bother with the veneer, and I know several women who would be after him if he weren't married.

Many men are cheating themselves. Women have grabbed hold of the advantages that come as a result of the women's movement, but men have not yet taken advantage of their own liberation - the kind that comes from being free to say how they feel.

Women often ask, ''Where are all the wonderful men?'' Where are the Vincents who believe in misty caves and the power of a poem? They are everywhere. They may be hiding their emotions deep in the drainpipe of the male myth, but they're out there.